AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MA-KA-TAI-ME-SHE-KIA-KIAK, OR BLACK HAWK, Embracing the Traditions of His Nation, Various Wars in Which He Has Been Engaged, and His Account of the Cause and General History of the Black Hawk War of 1832

Oquawka IL: J. B. Patterson - Continental Printing Co. Very Good. 1882. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. 208 pages; Contents clean and secure in original brown cloth binding with gilt lettering and blindstamped design to front and rear boards, gilt lettering faded at spine. Former gift inscription on ffep for Christmas 1943, five names; minor rubbing to spine ends and corners. Frontispiece portrait and two additional illustrated plates. Howes P-120 Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, (1767 – 1838) was a band leader and warrior of the Sauk American Indian tribe in what is now the Midwest of the United States. Although he had inherited an important historic medicine bundle from his father, he was not a hereditary civil chief. Black Hawk earned his status as a war chief or captain by his actions: leading raiding and war parties as a young man, and leading a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832. During the War of 1812, Black Hawk had fought on the side of the British against the U.S., hoping to push white American settlers away from Sauk territory. Later he led a band of Sauk and Fox warriors, known as the British Band, against European-American settlers in Illinois and present-day Wisconsin in the 1832 Black Hawk War. After the war, he was captured by U.S. forces and taken to the eastern U.S. He and other war leaders were taken on tour of several cities. Shortly before being released from custody, Black Hawk told his story to an interpreter Antoine LeClair and a newspaper reporter J.B. Patterson, who published Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nation. The first Native American autobiography to be published in the U.S., the book became an immediate bestseller and has gone through several editions. Black Hawk died in 1838 in what is now southeastern Iowa. At age 19, he led 200 men in a battle against the Osage, in which he personally killed five men and one woman. Soon after, he joined his father in a raid against Cherokee along the Meramec River in Missouri. After Pyesa died from wounds received in the battle, Black Hawk inherited the Sauk medicine bundle which his father had carried, giving him an important role in the tribe. After an extended period of mourning for his father, Black Hawk resumed leading raiding parties over the next years, usually targeting the traditional enemy, the Osage. Black Hawk did not belong to a clan that provided the Sauk with hereditary civil leaders, or "chiefs". He achieved status through his exploits as a warrior and by leading successful raiding parties. Men like Black Hawk are sometimes called "war chiefs", but historian Patrick Jung writes, "It is more accurate to call them 'war leaders' since the nature of their office and the power that it wielded was much different from that of a civil chief." .